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Cheap Iranian drone downed $25M US Army helicopter–maybe by chance
- spiderfarmer 5mo agoNot by chance. Why is the US Army helicopter flying in another sovereign country? The USA is the Russia of the West nowadays.
- spwa4 5mo agoI think they mean the Apache was there to shoot it down and managed to fly too close while blowing it up. On the plus side: blowing it up successfully. On the down side ... well that's why it's in the news. This is why you don't used manned systems to hunt unmanned ones ...
- tristanj 5mo agoThe helicopter in question was flying in Oman, in Omani territorial waters. Why does Iran have the right to fire drones into other countries?
- dmpk2k 5mo agoThe same Oman Trump was recently threatening to blow up? Heh.
- orwin 5mo agoBecause the US fired missiles from other countries? It's not a game of mounted tag.
- tristanj 5mo agoDo you believe Iran should not be prevented from acquiring nuclear weapons? Why do you think this entire conflict started?
- rbanffy 5mo agoIt started because Trump abandoned the agreement Obama signed and that was working, then sanctioned Iran for no good reason. At this point, every country with the ability to do so should be procuring nuclear deterrence capability, if for no other reason than to defend themselves from the US.
- tristanj 5mo agoYou dodged the question: JCOPA happened because Iran was developing nuclear weapons. If Iran wasn't pursuing nukes, there would be no JCOPA. Why should Iran be allowed to develop nuclear weapons in the first place?
- zzrrt 5mo agoWeird response that does some dodging of its own. Anyone defending JCPOA is obviously in favor of controlling nukes, so why don't you explain more than restating what we already agree with? You're going to have to specifically address why ending the program with no replacement was better than letting it continue. Your other comments about cost, lack of conventional weapon limits, and perverse incentives for other countries doesn't do much for me. (For one thing, other countries aren't very relevant to this discussion, unless the cost of paying them off were to actually become prohibitive.) It was something, it had some positive effect on the "Iran can't have nukes" you keep harping on, and it was replaced with nothing but sanctions. Why wouldn't they resume development?
- tristanj 5mo agoRubio's response to JCPOA in 2015 is prescient https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-5dQIVh_QT4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-5dQIVh_QT4 . Everything foretold in his speech has happened. Continued sanctions were a viable answer, the reason they failed is because Biden relaxed them at the beginning of his term, allowing Iran to resume oil sales and he also paid Iran $5B in exchange for hostages.
- 5mo ago
- wolvoleo 5mo ago> Why does Iran have the right to fire drones into other countries? If America hadn't started bombing Iran in the first place this wouldn't have happened anyway. Things would have been peaceful and oil prices would have been fine.
- tristanj 5mo agoAnd if the US/Israel didn't strike Iran, Iran would have ICBMs with nuclear warheads, which Iran could use for peace. Did you forget the purpose of the war?
- wolvoleo 5mo agoThe pretense that has already been debunked you mean. Iran was nowhere near having nuclear weapons. The purpose of the war was keeping Netanyahu in power by having a constant war going on. And Trump went along because he was promised a quick win which he could have used to turn his midterms around.
- tristanj 5mo ago> Iran was nowhere near having nuclear weapons. No, that's outdated. Iran had ~440kg of uranium enriched to 60%, enough for 9-10 nuclear weapons enriched to weapons grade. Given Iran's enormous centrifuge fleet, enrichment to enough material for a single weapons grade nuke would take 2-3 days. To enrich the entire amount would take 2-3 weeks. This comes straight from the 2025 IAEA report. https://armscontrolcenter.org/irans-stockpile-of-highly-enriched-uranium-worth-bargaining-for/ https://armscontrolcenter.org/irans-stockpile-of-highly-enri...
- spiderfarmer 5mo ago"Thus, a renewed offer to retrieve Iran’s 60% enriched uranium “under the supervision of the Agency [IAEA],” as stated by Foreign Minister Araghchi, and to down-blend it to lower enrichment, along with a return to IAEA verification and monitoring as well as constraints on Iran’s future enrichment levels, would be extremely valuable and well worth bargaining for. " Or, you could be very, very stupid and start bombing like maniacs. Without a plan, without allies and without justification. During ongoing negotiations as well, making you SO UNBELIEVABLY untrustworthy that NO-ONE will EVER trust this idiotic regime ever again. The stupidity is astounding.
- surgical_fire 5mo agoGee, I wonder why? Maybe because the Israel-US axis decided it was a good idea to start bombing them earlier this year? Could be that? Perhaps, and this is a long shot, they see military equipment close to their border as a threat? People get weird like that when countries start bombing their schoolgirls into minced meat.
- tristanj 5mo agoOr maybe Iran decided to start building nuclear weapons? They already have long range missiles, with enough range to strike most of Europe. Iran can place a nuclear warhead on one of these missiles, and they have an ICBM. This entire conflict was fully avoidable if Iran never pursued nuclear weapons. Why can't Iran just be a normal country, and not pursue nuclear weapons?
- surgical_fire 5mo ago> Or maybe Iran decided to start building nuclear weapons? Is that a good excuse to turn schoolgirls into minced meat? Also, let's not pretend this started in a vacuum. The US has been interfering in Iran for many decades. > This entire conflict was fully avoidable if Iran never pursued nuclear weapons. > Why can't Iran just be a normal country, and not pursue nuclear weapons? If anything, history shows that every country should pursue Nuclear weapons. That is the best insurance policy one can have against the US.
- tristanj 5mo agoIran would largely be left to itself if it did not pursue hostile foreign policy against countries in the region. Is Iran in a better position after firing missiles at Azerbaijan, Oman, and Turkey? All three of these countries were neutral or friendly towards Iran, until Iran fired missiles at each unprompted. Its current situation is largely self-inflicted, and a result of poor foreign policy choices. > If anything, history shows that every country should pursue Nuclear weapons. Why stop there, we should give every person on Earth nuclear weapons. That policy will lead to world peace, since there will be no world left to live in.
- Ekaros 5mo agoUSA has been Russia/Soviet Union of West since WW2...
- blitzar 5mo agoIt was a defensive flight deploying defensive missiles and defensive bullets against offensive school children who were threatening other countries by being in their own country. Shooting back is an act of war that must be responded to. (I would add that this is sarcasm, but it is reality for a lot of people sadly)
- 3683826312819 5mo ago[dead]
- thiagoharry 5mo agoUSA always did far worse things than Russia. Nothing new here.
- grim_io 5mo agoDefinitely not. You don't seem to know about the wars Russia fought even in the last 30 years, and the ways they did.
- niggischiggi 5mo ago[flagged]
- mugivarra69 5mo ago[dead]
- inglor_cz 5mo agoSo, the US relearns all the lessons of the Russo-Ukrainian war the hard way? Choppers proved very vulnerable already in 2022. History often repeats itself. In a similar way, Great Powers like France refused to study the lessons of the Russo-Japanese war of 1904-5 because it was something that happened in barbarian lands far away from glorious Europe, so it was obviously irrelevant to them, right? And then the shock of industrial warfare almost shattered the French army in summer 1914.
- tristanj 5mo agoAbsolutely incorrect. The attitude within the military industrial complex towards drone/UAVs has shifted enormously since the Russia/Ukraine conflict. However, procurement times on new equipment is on the order of several years to nearly a decade. There's not enough time to produce nor acquire this hardware. The US military is sitting on decades of older equipment. The Ukraine conflict started four years ago. Complaining that the US has not overhauled its inventory in just four years is unreasonable and unrealistic.
- sam_lowry_ 5mo agoWell then they have to hurry up or loose the war ;-)
- inglor_cz 5mo ago"However, procurement times on new equipment is on the order of several years to nearly a decade." Interesting that the Ukrainians can design, develop, produce and deploy a new type of a drone in something like 6 weeks. Of course, they are in a life-or-death struggle and thus cannot afford a decade of paper wars with various lawyerly and MBA types who want to have their say. That said, the US cannot afford those either, but it is under the illusion that it still can. Structural ossification at its best, and the result is ... inability to beat an impoverished, long sanctioned Middle-Eastern authoritarian regime into submission.
- tristanj 5mo agoUkraine has been operating under general mobilization and martial law since 2022. Comparing Ukraine to the United States which is under no mobilization and civilian rule is not a fair comparison. If the United States was fully mobilized and restructured into a war economy like Ukraine, we would see rapid changes in military doctrine. On Iran, describing the US as "inable" to win is structurally incorrect. The US could always win the war whenever it wants to. Same with Russia vs Ukraine. Both the USA and Russia have ICBMs. Neither choose to use them, for political reasons.
- deleted 5mo ago[deleted]
- yanhangyhy 5mo agoIs DronesPunk a thing yet?
- nehal3m 5mo agoDon't those Shaheds run on nVidia Jetson? Jensen cashing in again. Funny that most of the hardware in those drones is designed in the US. Stop hitting yourself.
- toxicunderGroov 5mo agoLocal wood frames, carbon from Japan, hardware designed in the USA, produced in China with Nvidia soft. It's kind of funny if it wasn't so wasteful on global resources.
- nozzlegear 5mo agoThe ghost of Milton Friedman is preparing his "pencil" speech as we speak!
- expedition32 5mo agoFriedman was right. Unfortunately the world does not consist of civilised nations trading with eachother. If the entire world was Dutch we'd be colonising the stars by now...
- upboundspiral 5mo agoFriedman's gift to the world was erasing the legacy of justice and desire to help the common person Keynes left behind. Keynes lived through two world wars and learned that global trade does not in fact mean that nations won't irrationally attack each other. In Keynes' view, the purpose of the economy is to lift up the average person out of poverty, and is so doing greatly eliminate one of the causes of war. Just a few decades after world war 2 Friedman would come along and talk about the power of "freedom" (ie, keeping the current status quo). He would repeat the ideological lies that led to people being unprepared for WW1 / WW2, namely being that free trade means nations won't attack each other, that there is a price at which racism is reasonable, among many other things. Friedman on segregation for example: “...consider a situation in which there are grocery stores serving a neighborhood inhabited by people who have a strong aversion to being waited on by Negro clerks. Suppose one of the grocery stores has a vacancy for a clerk and the first applicant qualified in other respects happens to be a Negro. Let us suppose that as a result of the law the store is required to hire him. The effect of this action will be to reduce the business done by this store and to impose losses on the owner. If the preference of the community is strong enough, it may even cause the store to close. When the owner of the store hires white clerks in preference to Negroes in the absence of the law, he may not be expressing any preference or prejudice, or taste of his own. He may simply be transmitting the tastes of the community. He is, as it were, producing the services for the consumers that the consumers are willing to pay for. Nonetheless, he is harmed, and indeed may be the only one harmed appreciably, by a law which prohibits him from engaging in this activity, that is, prohibits him from pandering to the tastes of the community for having a white rather than a Negro clerk. The consumers, whose preferences the law is intended to curb, will be affected substantially only to the extent that the number of stores is limited and hence they must pay higher prices because one store has gone out of business.”
- aaron695 5mo ago[dead]
- xvxvx 5mo agoJokes on them: the US has an infinite supply of $25M thanks to its servant population.
- SideburnsOfDoom 5mo agoMore or less, but "You go to war with the army you have, not the army you might want or wish to have at a later time." And also that the sticker price is a good indication of how easy it is to get an new one quickly. The side with $25M helicopters and $4m patriot missiles is at a big disadvantage to the side with $40K shaheeds here. Attrition favours the latter side. Assuming that both sides have stockpiles, the latter side will have more items in the stockpile, and will replenish it sooner. What happens when the air defences run out?
- conartist6 5mo agoI just want to confirm that people don't think hitting civilian drinking water as retaliation for a military helicopter is normal or ok
- roshin 5mo agopeople might not like it if it was targeted, but if it got slightly damaged (and currently functional) as collateral damage to a military target, I assume more people would be okay
- conartist6 5mo agoIf it was targeted, my understanding is that that action would fit the technical definition of a war crime
- roryirvine 5mo agoIt would also be a war crime even if it was merely reckless rather than deliberately targeted.
- everforward 5mo agoThis is all wishy washy without an actual court, but I’m dubious this would rise to that standard. From what I can tell, international law requires attacks to be distinct and proportional. Distinct meaning they distinguish between civilian and military targets (you cannot intentionally attack civilian targets), and proportional meaning that the collateral damage to civilians is proportional to the military value of the strike. This probably doesn’t meet that bar. Cutting off water is bad, but 20k people is a fairly small population for this kind of thing and presumably the US won’t stop them from repairing it (that probably would be a clear cut war crime). Presuming Irans government is functioning, this should be extremely hard for those people but probably not lethal. Trucking water around is an option, even if it’s not great.
- 5mo ago
- wolvoleo 5mo agoAn Apache only costs ,$25M? I thought it was a lot more.
- Bender 5mo ago"In 1986, the incremental or flyaway cost for the AH-64A was $7M and the average unit cost was approximately $13.9M based on total costs." [1] "A new AH-64E has a base flyaway cost of $35 million to $50 million, but international packages often exceed $100 million." [2] So probably slightly older models. [1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_AH-64_Apache https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_AH-64_Apache [2] - https://www.wionews.com/photos/apache-helicopter-cost-vs-power-is-it-worth-millions-per-unit-1781084972199 https://www.wionews.com/photos/apache-helicopter-cost-vs-pow...
- panny 5mo ago>maybe by chance. Big sky theory says otherwise. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_sky_theory https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_sky_theory
- hnbad 5mo agoThe article also states that Iran shot down the fighter jet the US had to recover the weapons officer of. I recall news reports at the time insisting that this was actually an accident or friendly fire incident as it had been the previous time they lost an aircraft within the Iranian sphere of influence. Given the US government's spiraling disregard for factuality, it's safe to assume any loss of equipment or personell in the area of operations is hostile, not accidental.
- juliusceasar 5mo ago2nd Epstein War, why? BECAUSE Israel controls the US presidents.
- adjejmxbdjdn 5mo agoAh yes, that’s why Obama worked hard for years to negotiate and sign the JCPOA against Netanyahu’s wishes. It’s much more factual and useful to point out that Trump is remarkably easily influenced and Netanyahu was able to remarkably easily influence him.
- fuckinpuppers 5mo agoJust you wait! The Trump-class battleships are going to roll in to conflicts and ………….. totally get messed up by cheap drone swarms Maybe don’t have the buffoon who thinks he knows everything drive those kind of decisions